“Nonkilling History: Shaping Policy with Lessons from the Past” Now Available

The Center for Global Nonkilling has just released its latest book Nonkilling History: Shaping Policy with Lessons from the Past, which includes a selection of 11 chapters prepared by members of its Nonkilling History Research Committee and edited by Committee Coordinator Antony Adolf. The volume can be downloaded for free from CGNK’s website and paperback copies can be ordered at US$ 11.

The surprise insight from Nonkilling History is that what did not happen explains why humanity lives today. This turns upside down understanding of history as the story of the victory of righteous or reprehensible human violence in struggles to satisfy human aspirations, wants, and needs. The volume brings forward a new perspective for a nonkilling science of history. Such a science will not only help to explain past to present human survival but will inform decisions, individual and collective, to promote future killing-free societies that sustain and celebrate human life. The invitation to explore nonkilling history in this volume will interest not only young and old scholars in history and other academic disciplines, but will surely invite nonkilling questions by general readers as well (Note from Glenn D. Paige’s Foreword).

Authors include accomplished scholars such as Scott H. Bennett, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Ira Chernus, Martha A. Ebbesen, Chipamong Chowdhury, Ravindra Kumar, Robert Jacob, Israel Sanmartín, Kazuyo Yamane, Howard Zinn and Antony Adolf. The volume is also intended as a tribute to our Nonkilling History Research Committee coleague Howard Zinn (1922-2010), and reproduces his “Nonviolent Direct Action” essay.